Mandate to change Canberra Press Gallery

If the six-month polling average is not a prediction, how is it that Rudd is in an enviable position? Grattan’s self-contradiction can only be understood in terms of a cheap and phony "objectivity".

Michelle "Scoop" Grattan next moves onto Howard, but not before dropping the bombshell that “The Australian Election Study, published by the Australian National University this week, reports (from the 2004 poll) that fewer voters are ‘rusted on’ to a particular party”. Stop the presses!

She asserts that this revelation is "disturbing for Howard, because it suggests people are willing to desert even a solidly performing government more readily than in the past". Grattan forgets her "objectivity" for a moment. If Howard leads a "solidly performing government", how does she explain "Labor’s 57.1 per cent two-party average vote for April to September" she quotes later in the article?

Grattan uses the metaphor of a birthday cake to describe Rudd waiting for election-day and describes Howard as Mr Micawber. Perhaps Miss Havisham (another Dickens character) and her wedding cake would provide a more appropriate metaphor, at least for Grattan herself.

Malcolm Farr of The Daily Telegraph, conjures amazing equations and random quotes to warn us against the Greens.

His headline is "Control of Senate a heavy cross to bear" with the lead, "The question of who is the most influential non-government member of the Senate could lead young players astray".

Farr’s warning to young players should be heeded. But the danger is not the Greens; it is Farr himself. Farr’s answer to his own question is Steve Fielding, sole senator for Family First. He regales the reader with a befuddlement of figures and deft displays of arithmetic to prove the Fielding ascendancy.

According to Farr’s method Family First achieved a 30 per cent success rate compared to the second placed Greens on 1.02 per cent. Farr’s scoring is akin to the rating of prize fighters by win/loss ratios. He compares successful legislative amendments per number of amendments attempted. But this effort is ultimately pointless. As Farr notes himself, "Those statistics don't tell the complete story".

Farr makes much of the prospect of one party holding the balance of power in the Senate. Farr writes, "That outcome could be Senate inertia - not unknown to Labor governments - or a swag of compromises which corrupted the political intentions of a Rudd government". The Hawke-Keating Government dealt with this situation between 1983 and 1993 when the Democrats alone held the balance of power. Ah, but this time it is different. Why?

At this point Farr dispenses with "subtlety" and circumlocution and names his evil. "Payne (Liberal) has been an influential identity in a number of serious Senate debates - while Nettle (Greens) hasn't. But that does not mean Nettle might not defeat the Liberal senator".

The Democrats and Family First "will argue that a Greens-directed Senate would not be good for Australia", Farr writes.

Farr concludes with a quote from Fielding, "It would be a disaster for Australia to have the Greens holding the balance of power", and "The Greens have shown they like to frustrate governments, whether state or federal, Coalition or Labor".